Abstract
The Universe is Expanding focuses on how assisted reproduction was made usable for the biomedical community, a process that resulted in the growth of the field as well as in the field’s robustness. The chapter traces the increase in the number of practitioners, clinics, procedures, uses, and users, as well as the consolidation of the field as mostly focused on assisted reproductive technologies, the establishment of a specific sort of clinic as the site where the field is practised, the construction of a self imposed normative framework, and the emergence of an international networked community of practitioners.
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Notes
- 1.
One of the leading complaints of the EZLN was the signing of the NAFTA a few months before, in 1993. Signing this agreement meant the abolition of Article 27 of the Constitution which protected the native communal landholdings from being sold and privatised. Without this protection, land could now be bought by whomever without limits, for example large food corporations (Kelly, 1994).
- 2.
I say openly because, as pointed out by Preston and Dillon (2004) Mexicans have had a close relationship with the USA long before the NAFTAA large percentage of the population has had a direct relationship with the USA, because either them or their family members have worked or studied in the USA, because they shop for goods and services, or because they spend holidays in the USA.
- 3.
Planificatel was a telephone helpline for family planning issues. The name is the merging of ‘Planifica’ which means to plan and ‘tell’ as in telephone.
- 4.
This story has also been repeated in, for example, López de Nava 1999 (Book: Medicina Reproductiva); Vázquez Benítez (2008) (Journal: Reproducción).
- 5.
These articles were written by the leading national AR specialists, most of which worked at AR clinics located in Mexico City, Monterrey (NL), Guadalajara (Jalisco), León (Guanajuato), Matamoros (Tamaulipas), San Luis Potosí (San Luis Potosí), and Puebla (Puebla).
- 6.
He is founder of the chain of clinics Instituto Vida, he works in Guadalajara, Jalisco.
- 7.
Between the first and the second edition, there are three important changes in terms of the book’s structure. The first change is regarding the sections, three new sections were added to the 2003 edition: “Recurrent Gestational Loss”, “Conventional Human Reproductive Surgery and Endoscopy”, and “Other Situations that can Affect Reproduction”, this last one with sections on cancer, life style, ectopic pregnancies, and genetic factors. The rest of the book’s chapters were the same. Both included sections on the different reproductive periods (from puberty to menopause), on family planning (contraception and sterilization), on infertility (note that there are eight sections dedicated to female factors and only one to male factors), and on assisted reproduction. Both also included chapters on education and reproduction, and on the legal and bioethical aspects of intervening in reproductive processes.
- 8.
For example, assisted hatching, the use of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), polymerase chain reaction (PCR), cryopreservation of embryo, improved visualisation instruments, faster and more accesible hormone determination techniques, criteria to evaluate sperm and embryos.
- 9.
Zhang had been banded from China, his native country, due to his work on spindle nuclear transfer. In recent years, 2016, he achieved the first birth using mitochondrial replacement techniques, a procedure he allegedly conducted in Mexico (see González Santos, Stephens, & Dimond, 2018).
- 10.
The new chapters in the 2003 edition were on indications and counter-indications for AR, the myths on sex selection, PGD, and on the use of hormones (e.g. FSH, LH, and hCG).
- 11.
The countries that participated were: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela. In the report, they state that there were 21 centres, however, in the list of clinics there are only 19 names (Zegers-Hochschild & Prado Aravena, 1990).
- 12.
Merck, Serono, Organon have been the most prominent throughout the years.
- 13.
Chris Hable Gray’s categorisation of different sorts of cyborgs is a useful tool to understand the conservative nature of these documents. He states that the integration of technology into what used to be natural systems can have different purposes, “cyborgs can be restorative, normalizing, reconfiguring, and enhancing” (2002: 11). Along this line, these consensuses accept the use of ARTs when it is a restorative or normalizing use (restore reproductive function or promote ‘normal’ reproduction), not when they are used to reconfigure or enhance reproductive practices (promote new family formations, select certain characteristics, etc.).
- 14.
The visit is done by two accreditors (usually a clinician and an embryologist), who must themselves belong to an accredited centre and have proper training to do this accreditation process, there should be no conflict of interest (i.e. not have any relationship with the centre they will visit), and ensure they will respect the confidentiality of the information received during the visit.
- 15.
To be accredited clinics need to comply with more requirements than for affiliation.
- 16.
Argentina (348.8), Chile (211.0), Uruguay (150.3), Brazil (133.4), Peru (108.1), Panama (97.7), Ecuador (81.6), Mexico (76.6). (Zegers-Hochschild, Schwarze, Crosby, Musri, & Urbina, 2017).
- 17.
Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Estado de México, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, SLP, Hermosillo, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and Mexico City.
- 18.
Interlomas is a wealthy suburb located in the north-west part of the city. At that time it would take about an hour to get from Angeles Pedregal to Interlomas, so this second clinic would be serving another population.
- 19.
José Remohí a founding partner of IVI and member of the board of directors. https://www.rmanj.com/about-us/ivi-rma-global/, accessed 29 January 2019. In addition to the clinics.
- 20.
A genetic testing company that specialises in reproductive genetics analysing the genetic composition of ova, sperm, embryos, and endometrium.
- 21.
One of the first difficulties they faced at the beginning of the IVF program was the water quality, Monterrey does not have the type of water that favors the procedures, it was not adequate for the medium which, at that time, was house made. When HAM F10 became available, a pre-made medium, their first success soon followed.
- 22.
They distribute equipment like microscopes, incubators, and laminal flow bells, as well as supplies such as cultivating medium, syringes, micro-pipets, and other lab material. They also offer maintenance services, sending technicians to clinics to check and repair the equipment.
- 23.
These are some of the names of the companies that had stalls at the event: Lepsi Prisma, Nanogbioetc, Demesa, IFA Celtics, Asofarma de México, CENAREM, Besins, Fertifarma, Kitazato, Biolietc, Corne, Ferring Merck, Igenomix, and Gedon Ritcher.
- 24.
The PAN (Partido Acción Nacional) was founded in 1939 by Manuel Gómez Morín, a man who stood against liberalism and individualism, together with members of the Jesuit national union of Catholic students (UNEC, Unión Nacional de Estudiantes Católicos) as an opposition to Lázaro Cárdenas. It has been a party that has frequently had to fight internal tensions between its pro-Catholic and pro-secular fractions.
The triumph of the PAN in 2000 was a surprise full of hope, but it was not announced. Although PRI had seldom allowed them to claim the victory, the PAN had already won smaller town elections during the eighties. However, the mixture of years of corruption and abuse of power, the worst financial crisis in the history of the country, and a new actor in the political scene made executing the traditional fraud no longer so easy. The new political actor was the Church, mainly in places like Chihuahua and Oaxaca (but also Chiapas and Morelos). After years of silently watching (and some would say participating in) how the PRI secured and used its power they began to live in their own skin the effects of the economic crisis, encouraging them to brake silence and urge parishioners to vote responsibly, to vote for change, to vote for those who were seeking profound changes for society (de la Torre, 2008). For example, when the 1986 local elections were underway, the archbishop of Chihuahua went even further and declared that not voting and committing fraud was a sin. Then, when a vulgar display of electoral fraud was performed in Chihuahua, the Church openly responded to the extent that the Secretary of State called the Vatican’s apostolic delegate to Mexico to ask for his aid in stoping the archbishops’ actions (Preston & Dillon, 2004). So, when in 2000 the PAN won the federal presidential elections, PRI could not do much more than let them take office.
- 25.
The population bonus was a period of time during which there is a possibility to accelerate development due to the composition of the population: the population within working age (between 15 and 65 years of age) is larger than the depending population (younger than 15 and older than 65).
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González-Santos, S.P. (2020). The Universe Is Expanding. In: A Portrait of Assisted Reproduction in Mexico. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23041-8_5
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